Holy Holly Batman!

Hello!  Here's my card for the December challenge at Inkurable Stampers, theme of Holly.

Well, here's where my near fetish for holly stamps came into its own.  I used a Penny Black brush stroke holly stamp for the main image, a Stamping Bella holly stamp for the background, and on another version of this card I used the Heather's Stamping Haven solid and open holly stamps. 

I started off by using a layout and technique idea from my stamping friend Mary, but changed up the colour scheme a bit.  I coloured a panel of watercolour paper with Tombow markers in shades of light yellow, light blue, and many greens, just scribbling on randomly.  Then I spritzed generously with water and let it blend around by itself, getting a fair bit of green on my hands.  (It washes off eventually.  I don't want to say how long because it all depends on how much you wash your hands.  I guess if you are neither a compulsive hand-washer or a germophile, it will wash off in about a day, unless you are very neat and don't get any on your hands in the first place.  If you are that person, I would watch for other miracles too, like Virgin Marys in your watercolour puddles.)  Ok, let the watercolour panel dry, and help it along with a heat tool if you want, once it's stopped sopping and dripping.  I set it aside to drip onto my crafting rag, which helped contain the mess, and added a cheerful green to the rag.  Once it was dry, I stamped with the Stamping Bella solid holly in Evergreen Bough distress ink, and also some music (Cornish Heritage Farms) in the same green.  Then I ironed it to seal the deal and stamped the Penny Black brush stroke holly in black and embossed in black.  Next was the message (from the Darkroom Door Dear Santa collection), but I wished afterwards I'd embossed that too.   I accented it with my sparkle pen, but I still wish I'd embossed it - next time. The card base is a medium gray linen, stamped with the same Penny Black holly in Ice Jade chalk ink.  The front side of the card is cut short by about 1 1/4", and a gold edge strip applied.  On the inside of the card is a black linen strip, stamped with my current favourite stamp, a scripty background from Impression Obsession.  I am using that stamp on everything.  Everything.  It works everywhere!  It is the little black dress of stamps.  Not that I have ever had a little black dress, or needed one, but I use the term to indicate a wardrobe staple, that can be dressed up or down, go uptown, downtown, day to evening with the right accessories, etc.  Only the stamp version is much more gratifying and requires neither pantyhose or high heels.  Once everything was all put together, I put some Patina stickles on the holly leaves and some Xmas Red and Candy cane stickles on the berries.   Yay holly!  Yay stamps!  This will be a quick one to do a batch of, maybe later tonight. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

RAK from Sarah S

Hello! I wanted to post a quick card that I got in the mail last week. I was lucky enough to win the stamp draw for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge, and my prize package arrived last week. (More info on the challenge wind-up here.) In that package were the lovely Crafty Individuals stamps and designer paper, but also this wonderful card, made by Sarah Schwerin, who hosted the challenge. I love this card - the blues just glow and the netting and braided twine add such lovely texture.

Also in my envelope were my Inkurable Stampers ATCs from a swap I participated in. I'll try to get a photo of those and post, but they are all lovely, each and every one, and I keep going back to look at them and see something new each time.

Thank you for the lovely card, Sarah, and for the great prizes! I can't wait to get them inky :-)

Inkurable Stampers June Challenge

Here's my entry for the June challenge at Inkurable Stampers, which is Spots, Dots and Circles.

I recently took a great class at Heather's, featuring Glimmer Mist and I used that technique here, misting and spraying and bleaching out selected portions. I coloured some back in with pencil crayon too. I chose the bird image (Hero Arts) for the circles on it. I also added some paint circles, and the background has a circular motif on the stamp (Stampers Anonymous). The message (also Stampers Anon) is embossed in black. The paper is from a Tim Holtz pack, two sides of one sheet. And a little round clock brad to finish it off. In real life it's quite sparkly. I'm not sure about it - maybe the square is too square. Still, needed to get my entry in before the end of the month, which arrives early due to time zones in Australia being several days ahead of us here in Canada. (I love to say things like that to hubby, who is an engineer and immediately starts to explain the quantum mechanics of time zones and how it's not actually time travel, it's to do with the curvature of the earth and Sir Sanford Fleming trying to catch a train. It's at this point I normally tune out so I can't exactly say how time zones work, other than it's either much earlier or much later somewhere else, and will always be the wrong time to call.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Inkurable Stampers May Challenge

Here's my entry for the May challenge at Inkurable Stampers, theme of "Food". I debated for a while about which stamp to use: artichoke, radish/beet, cutlery, dessert, chocolate bunny, Fred B Mullett fish. Then I opened my drawer of pear stamps (should I feel abashed to type that?) and selected several favourites. This was the one that ultimately got picked (Sunshine Designs) and I spent ages colouring and blending and blending and colouring (Tombow technique -take Krista's class at Heather's in June!). Then I pried the top off my Liquid Crackle Accents (no patience whatsoever to apply tiny drop by tiny drop to large area), and applied liberally to all three pears, envisioning a lovely porcelain effect. I did NOT envision a horrific mess as the Liquid Accents caused all red ink to run into the yellow. Hideous and unsalvageable (and I will salvage almost anything). Grr. Luckily I remembered which 47 markers I used (which comforts me when I wonder the rest of the time if I have early-onset dementia) and coloured it up quickly. Next came the laborious steps of turning into a card. I must have matted and layered this thing 50 times. I discovered that the wrinkly piece of Japanese paper will release anything without too much trouble, as will gold metallic. Eventually I settled on this. It's a warm khaki linen card base with pear words (A Stamp in the Hand) and edged it with Memories Art Print Brown. A little scrap of Bazzil in burgundy anchored it, and I also edged the Japanese paper, which has lovely metallic flecks in it mostly hidden. But I know they're there! Then a piece of ivory tsumugi, and then gold metallic and then black and then the image. One version of the card had patterned paper in there (matted to boot!), but that was definitely two layers too many. It looked ok up close, colours were fine, everything worked, but at arm's length the design was definitely off. I'm not sure about the final result, but I had pried and re-taped and tested every piece of paper I own. This is as good as it gets. I may yet try my crazed porcelain technique with Copics, but I am sufficiently crazed at the moment without the addition of crackle accents. Thanks for stopping by!

Inkurable Stampers April Challenge

Here's my card at literally the eleventh hour for the April challenge at Inkurable Stampers. This was a tough challenge: 3 stamps, 3 colours (including neutrals), and the number 3 somewhere on the card. I thought I would go with a vintage typewriter theme, since I have a Stampers Anonymous stamp (Going Somewhere set) with letters and numerals on it, satisfying that condition. I stamped the typewriter (Cornish Heritage Farms) on vanilla paper and embossed in a lovely green (Topiary) and trimmed out. The "missing you" is from the same Cornish Heritage Farms set (On the Desk), and embossed in white, tinted with Copics, which was probably a mistake since it seemed like it rubbed off a bit on the tip. I just don't have vanilla embossing powder (must be the one colour I'm missing!). These bits and pieces were layered up and matted on black and put on a dark green card base (Pinefeather, by PTI), on which I stamped the same letters/numerals in Memories Pine Tree ink. The typewriter is popped up on dimensional tape. This was a tricky challenge and took all month to percolate in my mind. I like how this turned out, crisp and clean and beautiful colours. Tricky challenges are always the most fun!

NSR (RWR): Not Stamping Related (Royal Wedding Related)

How about that wedding!!!! I got up at 5:15 to see the arrivals at the Abbey, and got the girls up at 5:30 to see the families arriving. It was so exciting. What a beautiful service. I found it very moving. You will get all the fashion commentary elsewhere, but I will say that I agree with millions of others that the Duchess of Cambridge looked incredibly beautiful. I will also note that someone at work observed that a certain royal cousin looked like she was wearing moose antlers. Probably her head gear was intended to be appreciated on a different level, perhaps like jazz music or Booker Prize novels. The girls and I had a great time watching the ceremony and processions, etc., and breakfasted on English muffins, crumpets and tea. I thought the Bishop of London's address was very inspirational, and the music was incredible. That said, I do love to hear bagpipes and I did miss them today. The trumpet fanfare was lovely, and the orchestra was too, but still, it doesn't seem like a proper "big do" without bagpipes. But I would hate to criticize an otherwise spectacular celebration of marriage.

Paint Challenge

Here's my card for the March challenge at Inkurable Stampers, which is to use paint. I started with a sheet of textured shimmer paper, and coated it with acrylic paint dabbers and (pool and lettuce). The shimmer didn't show through, but I still like the texture of the paper, and the white bits still show shimmer. The "thanks" (Impress Rubber Stamps) was stamped in black and heat embossed in black, and matted on more black. The card base is olive, with some botanical silhouettes (Darkroom Door) stamped in dusty lime and Opaline blue ink. The flowers are from my stash.

Thanks for stopping by!

Inkurable Stampers - Bookmark Challenge

Here's my bookmark for the current Inkurable Stampers challenge. Well, current for the next 11 hours. Nothing like under the wire, and this challenge ran a bit long too. I thought it would be easy to whip off a bookmark. Not so much! This one was whipped off, and it shows. Still, it was fun to get all inky, and if I didn't have to sleep for most of the next 11 hours, I would probably do another one.

This one features Darkroom Door stamps (words and botanical silhouettes) and a Stampers Anonymous flourish in gold. All ink is Distress ink and the ribbon is hand-dyed (not by me) silk ribbon.

My box of goodies from Darkroom Door was amazing: a TON of new stamps and only two duplicates, film strips, paper, kits, word strips, photo chips, a punched red circle (!), and a sheet of cling mount so I could get some stamps mounted already. So many goodies, and two new sets (since I was already paying for shipping, it seemed smart). Rubbery goodness all round.

Serene Birthday Card (or How to Hide Mistakes)

Hello! I made this card for the January challenge at Inkredible Stampers, which was to make a "golden birthday" card. Your golden birthday is the one where you turn the same age as the date. I passed mine a while ago, so I just used a birthday theme with gold elements.

I started off with the black panel, stamping it in Memories Soft Gold using the Cornish Heritage Farms Spanish Script backgrounder. Then, I added that beautiful leaf stamp (Wild Raspberry, Fred B Mullett) and embossed it in gold. Fred B Mullett has beautiful stamps from nature prints, lots of botanicals and vegetables, as well as fish and other sea creatures. They're gorgeous. Anyway, back to the card. I stamped the happy birthday (A Muse) and embossed it too, and mounted all on a gold mat. I thought this mossy tsumugi card base was nice, but when I folded it, it cracked, so I covered it up with some tissue tape (Tim Holtz). I stamped the card base in versamark with the same wild raspberry leaves, and added a strip of plum textured paper. I like to keep strips like this for accents, and not just because I can't bear to part with the smallest pieces of my favourite paper. Now, having introduced purple, I felt compelled to follow the rule of threes, so I added some eggplant dimensional pearls. Have you spotted them? No? Well, that's because they really blobbed out into enormous blobs in the top left corner, so I applied a Tim Holtz metal corner. (Two actually, another on the bottom left, but it was too much so I pried if off, with some difficulty I might add). During all this, the other smaller dots of eggplant dimensional pearls under the happy birthday got smudged, so I scraped them off too and covered up the damage with mushroom dimensional pearls instead. Take that rule of three! Take that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Adoration of the Magi

Here's my entry for the December challenge at Inkurable Stampers. I was very fortunate to be chosen as last month's winner of the international entries (thank you!) and a lovely stamp set from Tarisota Stamps will be on it's way to me all the way from Australia. I will be sure to post something when I get it. Thank you Sarah and Tarisota!!!

The theme this month is one-layer cards, with minimal embellishments. We were allowed to mount our layer onto a base, so I did that, since I like the framing effect. I wanted to use the Fred Mullet fish stamp (Pompano) that my mother brought me, and I was fooling around with it, colouring with markers direct to rubber, and one thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I had 3 Wise Fish , and they had to be following a star. So one emergency run to my local stamp store for a star fish later (and Heather didn't let me down!), I had my pisciform magi following the star. I must give apologies to Jo Capper-Sandon, as I'm sure I was led down this creative path by this wonderful Three Bee Kings card.

A few more notes about this card: the starfish is a Michael Strong stamp, stamped in Wild Honey, and coloured in with the same using a blender pen. The fish were coloured with Tombow markers, and the coral is actually from a gemstone cube (Stampendous), as is the "water", just a different side of the cube. There is a fan coral stamp too (Coronado Island). The crowns are by Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous and Stampin' Up and the sentiment is from Cornish Heritage Farms. I'm irked that it's crooked - my pilot test was straight, but this wound up crooked. I hoped it wasn't too bad, but my mother noticed right away, which goes to show you that no matter how old you get, you still can't sneak things past your mother. As for embellishments, there are platinum liquid pearl bubbles, distress stickles on the star and sand, and glossy accents on the eyes. If I were to do this card again (and this was effort number 3 or 4, so I was quite tired of colouring the fish with the 5 markers I felt it needed), I would mask the crowns. And get the words straight.

I'm not sure if I'll send this out. I don't usually send Epiphany cards, but this one might have to get used, if I could bear to part with it. I do have a soft spot for it. I showed it to DH, who said it was corny. (Corny?! Harumph. Try post-modern ironic or humorous allegory, but definitely not corny. Double-harumph.)

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Fifth Day of Christmas! Fiiiiiiive golden riiiiiiiings!

Arch #23 Signs of the Zodiac

This is Arch #23 for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge, theme "Signs of the Zodiac". I have had this image of the woman with the bowl of stars (Ms Starry, Stampotique) for a while and have been itching to use it. I stamped her on watercolour paper and coloured her with Tombows and cut her out. I stamped the arch with the star map (Cornish Heritage Farms), which has signs of the zodiac constellations on it, also embossed in gold, and also coloured with Tombows. I added a few other stars (Papertrey Ink). The stars are stickled and some are popped up, like the lady.

I like this lady who is flinging stars into the sky, and she is a much more satisfactory theory for the origin of stars than some sort of cosmic collision of gases or whatever it is now that the physicists think stars come from.

Gothic Arch #22 Mythical Creatures

Here's Arch #22 - mythical creatures for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge. The main image is clip art, and is of an aquatic fairy on a shell, with a squid. She looks a bit glum, but then again, wouldn't you? All the other clip art fairies got to be doing interesting things like flying around on butterflies and lounging on flowers. She got the squid. So it seemed only right to use her on an arch and give her more of a reason to live, not that she shows any gratitude. That's squid fairies for you.

There is some stamping on here, the words (Stampin' Up) and the shells (Stampin' Up) on the dangly bit with the beads and pearls. I stamped those on shrink plastic and coloured with alcohol ink before shrinking. The navy paper is mulberry and already had the stars on it. The medallion at the top is metallic paper that I had on my desk so I clipped it to fit. I think it was from a spellbinders die originally and I embossed it and clipped to fit, and put a pearl on it.

I'm feeling a bit squid-fairyish about this arch, but not inclined to do a do-over at this point. These arches are what they are and there is more stamping ahead to waste time on do-overs. So onwards and upwards and off to use the new stamps I got for Christmas. Yay! I hope you had a good Christmas. We are having a great time and were even out swimming today with the kids.

Shabby Chic Christmas

The November challenge at Inkurable Stampers is to make a shabby chic Christmas card. The top photo was my first stab. I had in mind to use that lovely chapel in the woods (Paper Inspirations), stamped in Versafine sepia, and treated to the double-tack film and warm highlight Glitter Ritz treatment. Then I got stuck. I thought a pale blue backdrop would be in the shabby chic vein, and even added some blue velvet paper. And some ruffly ribbon, and a ribbon slide, which was sponged around the edges and stamped with a Cornish Heritage Farms sentiment (I like it to say "Merry Christmas", but this was the one that would fit on the die cut - oh well). There are also snowflakes stamped in light blue (seascapes, by Palette) on the card base.

I waited for a bright day that I was home in the daytime, got out the paper for a backdrop to photograph it, got it uploaded, etc. and realized that the only thing shabby chic about it was the ribbon and slide. The rest was just too crisp and I just couldn't call it shabby chic. I went back to the website for some inspiration and that worked. There were so many lovely examples, that I went to town. I sponged, and dabbed and daubed and remedied and I think that the second version is much shabbier. Not sure if it's any chic-er or not!

Version two included some felt snowflakes that I glittered, and I also sponged the edges and added the stamped brocade background. If I could have pried everything apart, I would have embossed the velvet too. I was afraid it might get too shabby if I started prying layers apart. As it is, it might be better submitted to a "faux scorched" challenge than shabby chic. Perhaps if I painted the whole card white and used it as a hat stand in my tiny hallway, it would be a better exemplar of shabby chic......

Thanks for stopping by!

Arch #18 Flowers

Here's Arch #18, theme of Flowers for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch Challenge. I've been working away on these challenges and had this one done for some time, but didn't get to photographing and uploading it till today. So do you like my very artsy shadow effect? Purely accidental and I couldn't figure out how to photoshop it out. This photo was the best for showing the shiny beads and the shimmery Perfect Pearl stamping. This arch started out life as a card base, which was rejected for its original purpose. I had stamped it with this lovely agapanthus image (Stampendous) using Perfect Pearls and white/embossing. The brown strip at the bottom was also in the scrap basket (edged with a Tim Holtz border die) and I felt it worked perfectly here. The quote (Paper Inspirations) is on vellum embossed in gold. I glued on some purpley browny beads for some extra embellishment. I'm not sure that purple and brown will be my favourite colour combination, but for an arch it's ok. It makes a change from the usual distress ink backgrounds or Adirondack colour washes anyway!

Only a few more arches left! If you want to play along and are up for a marathon of arches, you still have time.

Arch 20 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Here's Arch #20 for the Inkurable Stampers' Gothic Arch Challenge. The theme was Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I hunted high and low for my vintage truck stamp that I won from Darkroom Door. You will see from the arch that I failed to find it that day, when I had some open time to stamp. I went with this gorgeous Hampton Art image (London Diva), stamped in India Ink on smooth cardstock and inked with Crushed Olive, Broken China, and Vintage Photo. I accented the bus with red pencil crayon, dropped on some water, and bleached the lady's face, veil, cuffs, collar and tummy-medallion. The side of the arch was unstamped, so I went over that with some text, didn't like it, stamped a flourish over top, embossed in Garnet. Still not loving it, but it was time to make supper so I was finished. I added a rhinestone brad to the top, since the point felt a bit empty. That's it, that's all! Thanks for stopping by. Only a few more arches left! The next one is Mythical Creatures. I have some goldified wings that seem like they might need using for that one :-) They have been hanging around on my desk for a while, so I'd like to try to work them in. How's that for a cliffhanger?! My blog meets True Blood/24/MI-5! ha ha.

Arch #19 All About Me

This is Arch #19 - theme "All About Me", for the Inkurable Stampers' year-long Gothic Arch challenge. This was such a tough one. I really struggled. I decided that rather than go "deep" on this one, I would just go with the flow, which I guess is really very much "me" after all. Just realizing that now! (Also very much me!) Anyway, the main image is a Stampotique one, and is me as the reluctant office worker (with bad hair and questionable sartorial instincts, if only I was that tall and thin though!). I am sleep-deprived, and in a partial zombie state most of the time (see the greenish pallor?), have to wear the 'office uniform' of blouse, etc., but usually try to have something colourful like a scarf knotted like a tie, or a shawl or something. I even have a blue blouse like this one, but no red polka dot tie, sadly. I don't wear mittens at work, but I do have some mittens that I knit for myself, and can usually only find one of any given pair, so that's about me too. I guess if I did want to go deep on this one, I would usually rather be outside admiring the sky and air than be inside at work. In fact, I would like to be a farmer (small multi-animal self-sufficient farm in remote, but idyllic location with bees and flowers and a Canadienne cow for our milk and cream), but my husband continually talks me out of it citing trivialities such as lack of money and vacation and the extreme likelihood that I would immediately lose interest in farming once I had to clean out the barn. Our plan is to take a farm vacation to 'cure' me of this dream, which could be a rather risky plan seeing as I could realize my true calling. Another thing about me - addicted to colour, colour wash, colouring, colour flinging, colour spritzing, colour sponging, colour-using of any kind. All of these are found somewhere on this arch. I also have a sense of humour and love to laugh. And I have a million stamps. Which explains the yellow joke panel (Stampin' Up stamp). Another thing about me is that I can never bear to throw away interesting scraps, so I have used some on this card to make the grass and the flowers and the yellow joke panel. Another thing about me is that I love Japanese paper, but can never bring myself to use it because it might get used up. I did get out some nice Japanese paper in shades of green to use as the grass. Do you see the watercolour paper grass that actually got used? hahaha. That is so me.

Also one last thing about me that you can't see directly on the arch - I lost her for quite some time, mid-project. I put things down on my desk and then they vanish, mid-project. I spend time hunting and cursing and vowing to improve my organizational abilities, then I find the thing and immediately abandon tedious activities such as tidying and organizing. One more last thing about this arch: the circles around my head symbolize all the balls I have in the air, but please also note all the ones that have fallen on the ground! So that's this arch. All about me.

Happy Hallowe'en

Happy Hallowe'en! We've had a great day. I was at an all-day Copic class with Krista Schneider. It was wonderful. Colouring alllll day - what could be better??? Well, going over to my brother's place for a super Hallowe'en party and then coming home to make a Gothic arch. That's a lot of goodness packed into one day. I'm so worn out from all that goodness I can hardly picture going to work tomorrow!

This arch was a fun one. I went with a pre-coloured piece of watercolour paper that I had around from a session of spray and smoosh on the freezer. I had used shades of green and blue from Adirondack colour washes and let them dry. I think Pesto, Mushroom, Stream, and Denim were implicated in this recent experiment. I stamped on the spooky branches and text (Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous) in distress ink, followed by the crow and pumpkin image (Inkadinkado) in Ranger Archival. To colour them, I painted on bleach over the moon, crow and pumpkins. Then, I added colour back in with a paintbrush and distress ink pads (mustard seed, spiced marmalade, rusty hinge, walnut stain). Then, swooped over the focal image with Rock Candy crackle paint, which did smear the moon somewhat (that would put the trick in trick-or-treat I guess). Waited impatiently for cracks to form then bam-whooshed it with the heat tool to finish it off. Then it needed something more, so more spooky branches stamped on and embossed with Bavarian Bronze to create some depth of field, or something anyway. So that's my Arch #21 - Spooky theme for Inkurable Stampers! Yay - in under the wire on Hallowe'en.

Arch #17 - Metals

Now this is metal, baby! I started with a piece of copper coloured foil (Spellbinders, I think), coloured it with alcohol inks (Terra Cotta, Denim, Espresso, Copper) and ran it through the Big Shot with a Tim Holtz folder (Retro Circles). Then I had it on my desk for two days while I fiddled and snipped and tried to find things that would look good with it. Not sure I succeeded there, but I will say that this was the best of a bad lot. This guitar dude (Stampin' Up!) seemed to trigger the music kind of metal for me (though his hair is too short and styled and pants a bit too stylish to be a real metal dude). Still, it's evokes the idea if not actually slaving to reality. I stamped him and embossed him with Lapis Lazuli on a piece of colourwashed paper I had on hand. That got scuffled on the edges, stamped with a word stamp (Tim Holtz, Stampers Anonymous) and mounted over some navy mulberry paper with stars. The "heavy metal" is from my label maker and at this point I called it quits. In real life the metal is very shiny and I spent the whole time making this freaking myself out seeing my reflection moving in all those retro circles. You know how movement can catch the corner of your eye, well this foil is extremely reflective. Add numerous ridges = more reflective surfaces, plus one over caffeinated stamper and you have one jumpy situation. And here I thought stamping was supposed to be relaxing!

Thanks for stopping by.

Arch #16 Birds

Ok, this arch (#16, Birds, for Inkurable Stampers) was a bit of a stretch for me. I wanted to do something a bit different, softer colours, more stamps, less 'stuff'. I assembled the various bird stamps from my collection of Sunshine Designs stamps (The Stamp Barn), as well as twiggy branchy bits, and some general design elements. I chose 3 colours of Distress ink, got out the sticky notes, and went to work. (Or should I say play!) The colours are Victorian Velvet, Stormy Sky and Peeled Paint. (I'm not positive on the green - I made this about a week ago.) I stamped, I sponged, I coloured (with Copic/Promarker) and highlighted with glitter pen and pearl paint. I also emphasized the borders between the areas with a black marker. In the end I decided I liked it enough to post, but I'm not in love with it. Still, it met the criterion to have fun trying something new, that was a bit of a stretch for me. (Except for the crooked "Happy" - that's my signature style!) I had the dickens of a time finding a word stamp for that panel. I guess that's where a bit of planning would have come in handy. Now that would be a real stretch for me!



Thanks for stopping by!

Arch 15 Keys or "Escutcheon Subdued"

Introducing the escutcheon formerly known as recalcitrant. This escutcheon caused me no end of grief, but I was able to subdue it in the end, only to discover that it looks like plop when I scanned it. I'll try to take a picture of it instead if it's sunny tomorrow since Arch #18 needs to be photo'd too. Anyway, this escutcheon was painted, sanded, painted another colour, distressed, embossed and painted again. Man, that grungeboard can take a lickin'. It practically had 40 lashes and it looks like the day it was born, or at least popped out of the hardware panel. I think in the end, it's mostly black, with some pearl and silver paint over top, highlighted with some blue, green and red twinklings that were out for another project. I backed the keyhole with some dark paper so it wouldn't peek through to the verdigris metallic panel, which I embossed with the Wrought Iron folder. The arch itself is a sort of greenish navy, with a delicate stripe. I stamped it with the Hero Arts weedy frame using a gold metallic, Peacock Gold, I think. I also stamped a weedy looking flower (Stampin' Up!) in brown on the side. The key is from my stash and the ribbon is BasicGrey (Periphery line I think), tied with hemp twine. All in all, this arch isn't what I had in mind, but it was good enough. I feel like it needs some words on it somewhere, but you know what, it was time to stop.

Thanks for stopping by!

PS Did you see how I pinned down that escutcheon? He's going nowhere now. I win! Also I suppose I should mention that this is for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge, but this would be the 15th time mentioning and you're probably catching on....

October Challenge at Inkurable Stampers

So, do you find yourself blinking and rubbing your eyes? I am. I wanted to do the October challenge for Inkurable Stampers (sketch with three stamps) before October whizzes past me. I saw this technique in a stamp magazine and the way that other person did it, it looked very cool. This looks not so much cool as out of focus. What you do is ink and spritz a solid stamp, then repeat with another colour. I used Deep Turquoise and Van Dyke Brown (Nick Bantock line). I like the turquoise and brown combination, which I accented with the colour base (a greenish navy) and the textured paper in shades of brown. I also stamped a sketchy flower (SU) and the message (SU) for my three stamps. The ribbon is a better colour match in real life, and it's a bi-colour silk ribbon from my stash that I believe I got from Stamp and Scrap Canada. They have some cool collagey things, but lots of stuff is out of stock since I think they are trying to sell stuff off. Still, every time I go there, they are still in business and I always find some treasures.

Well, I'm not sure how happy I am with this project, but it was fun to try out a new technique. It might just need a bit of work to get it right. The stamp that the other person used was more solid, which lent itself better to the purpose I think. Anyway, it is what it is. And it freaks me out every time I look at it, like I'm losing my vision or something. I'm losing something anyway, may not be my vision, but I am definitely losing it!

Thanks for stopping by!